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NASA Topic

Changing the subject from the slap-fight that's occurring in another thread. I just got a NY Times alert that a spacecraft looking for life on other planets may have broke.

My question is multi-faceted - how much money does NASA spend? With an increasing debt, bad economy, yadda yadda yadda, why are spending money on "finding planets" etc. I'm all for finding asteroids that are hurdling our way and developing ways to fix the problem of being destroyed by a space rock if/when that happens. Other than that...I don't see the point of spending money on NASA things right now. Anyone care to explain why we should be?

Posted by burnsy483 on 5/15/2013 4:00:00 PM (view original):Changing the subject from the slap-fight that's occurring in another thread. I just got a NY Times alert that a spacecraft looking for life on other planets may have broke.

My question is multi-faceted - how much money does NASA spend? With an increasing debt, bad economy, yadda yadda yadda, why are spending money on "finding planets" etc. I'm all for finding asteroids that are hurdling our way and developing ways to fix the problem of being destroyed by a space rock if/when that happens. Other than that...I don't see the point of spending money on NASA things right now. Anyone care to explain why we should be?

No idea how much NASA spends but I think space exploration is important.

I think you could easily fund NASA with a small cut to the defense department budget. How about we stop policing the world and bring our troops back to the US? That is about 500K troops. How many other countries, outside of UN Blue Helmets, have troops in other countries? That ought to save a few bucks for other things.

Regardless of the venture, you can't stop striving for knowledge. For lack of a better way to put it, some technology is discovered "by accident". Bell was trying to improve the telegraph, Spencer melted a candy bar in his pocket while working with radar. Neither set out to invent something new. And, while it slips my mind, I believe I've read some things were discovered thru the early space exploration efforts.

Yea that's the thing, I can't think of anything offhand where space exploration led to a discovery of something significant that helped us here on Earth. I'm sure there is and I don't know about it or forgot about it.

I did think I had a couple "yea that makes sense" posts here. We make a big deal about lowering the deficit, balancing the budget, wasteful spending, etc. But a robot on Mars? Great investment!

Do a Google search of "space program discoveries/inventions" or the like. It's not necessarily that we found a bunch of stuff in space that helped back here, but there's all kinds of every day technology that was invented/inspired as a result of space exploration.

Do a Google search of "space program discoveries/inventions" or the like. It's not necessarily that we found a bunch of stuff in space that helped back here, but there's all kinds of every day technology that was invented/inspired as a result of space exploration.

Fair. Here's some cool stuff in the link below. I'd recommend hitting the "view as one page" button.

It's simply frustrating when I see that a piece of space equipment that's millions and millions of miles away breaks down and you wonder if it's really important to be spending money on this, at least right now. But maybe the money is miniscule compared to other obvious things that could be cut too, I don't know.

I DO think that we should spend $ towards looking for asteroids, and the technology to figure out how to defend the planet if we find a asteroid that will impact Earth, as goofy as that sounds. So maybe reallocate $ spent for looking for other planets lightyears away towards this issue.

Chances are any intelligent beings we find will be far more advanced than we are, and they are more likely to view us as either nothing important or as something to be destroyed than to be kindred spirits searching for other life as we purport to be.

Even Stephen Hawking agrees with this when he said:

If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans.

We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.

So while Hawking is in favor of space exploration in general (obviously), he is not in favor of seeking out intelligent extraterrestrial life, and I'm inclined to agree it probably isn't a good idea.

Posted by burnsy483 on 5/16/2013 9:42:00 AM (view original):It's simply frustrating when I see that a piece of space equipment that's millions and millions of miles away breaks down and you wonder if it's really important to be spending money on this, at least right now. But maybe the money is miniscule compared to other obvious things that could be cut too, I don't know.

I DO think that we should spend $ towards looking for asteroids, and the technology to figure out how to defend the planet if we find a asteroid that will impact Earth, as goofy as that sounds. So maybe reallocate $ spent for looking for other planets lightyears away towards this issue.

Perhaps the technology used to design that "robot" will be technology we use in the future to shoot down that bigass asteroid that concerns you. It's not just the equipment that's millions and millions away that matter. It's the technology to build/operate the equipment and the technology used to get it there.